Re: Re:

Re:

It seems he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and wire fraud. The first one seems clear enough, if he knew about a crime and helped to conceal it (free speech aside). But what about the second one? Did he admit that his methods did not work, or something?

In other news: it's been a slow day today.

In your own words: "This is the same old story over and over again."
An interesting article, as usual, but there is nothing new here. As much as I usually disagree with OOTB, he may have a point this once. A number of techdirt articles start out with a bit of (interesting) news, before repeating the same old arguments (and preaching to the choir and deaf congregation). This time, there is enough news for only 2 sentences. Why bother?

"That public interest cannot be realized if the inherent difficulty of proving actual damages leaves the copyright holder without an effective remedy for infringement or precludes an effective means of deterring further copyright violations."

The White House seems to admit that this law cannot be effectively enforced in accordance with principles of justice and fairness. So do we change the law or give up on fairness?

Re:

The problem with deduplication is that if somebody provides Mega with a file, Mega is able to determine which users have uploaded that same file. So it is not an issue if you are uploading family pictures or personal documents, but it is an issue if you are uploading anything from the internet.

Re: Re:

Public service may be good at maintaining existing infrastructure, but it very often fails to innovate. What might help would be regulation (even local) that makes it much easier and cheaper to enter the competition. Perhaps whenever you put anything into ground (water, waste, electricity, phone, ...) or repave a street, you would have to bury certain amount of fiber and then lease to highest bidder?

Re: Re: Caps

Caps are very usefull for ISPs. They sell plans based on "peak" download speeds. Yet the sum of all "peak" speeds sold greatly exceeds the actual capacity of the network. So if everybody decides to pirate the new blockbuster at the same time (or just watch Netflix at HD), the ISP cannot deliver on their promise. It is like airlines overbooking flights. You are fine until everybody turns up. Data caps keep you off internet, reducing conflict. So with caps the ISP can sell more "high" speed plans.

Any pricing of cable internet will be entirely arbitrary. The actual costs are almost entirely fixed and have nothing to do with the actual usage. ISPs behave like any "good" corporation should. Anything they say is just PR BS in their effort to squeeze as much money as possible out of existing infrastructure. And regulation will not help, only real competition will. Look at Canada if you need a proof. Here the owners of cable are common carriers and independent ISPs are free to offer internet access over that infrastructure. Yet the internet access still sucks. Common carriers can still charge any arbitrary amount to cover their "costs", they just charge the independent ISP first, who transfers the cost onto you.

Re: Google creates none of the value in content linked.

First, this law would only strengthen Google's monopoly. Google may be the only search engine that can easily afford whatever fee the news publishers come up with. Smaller search engines will not be able to afford the fee and will slowly become irrelevant. Right?

Second, if you don't like Google "flexing" its influence against a government, where do you stand with National Rifle Association?

"The EU has defined terrorist offences as ‘intentional acts which ... may seriously damage ... an international organization where committed with the aim of ... seriously destabilizing ... the fundamental ... economic [structure] of ... an international organization” (EU FD, 13 June 2002 on combating terrorism).

Re: Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

No, they are not. They are trying to gouge libraries. You can purchase a physical book in a bookstore and then lend it anybody you want. If publishers tried to charge libraries extra, they would simply start buying through Amazon.

But ebooks are licensed and not sold. Nobody can lend their ebook to another person without express permission from the publisher. So they can charge different prices to different classes of buyers. As the above article correctly points out, libraries work with fixed budgets. They will simply buy fewer ebooks, slowing down the digital revolution in publishing, which is the point!

Re: Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

Why would you think that libraries are "resisting paying their fare share of development costs?" Wouldn't the market price be the "fair" price in your book? And the last time I checked, libraries are paying what the publishers charge. They may not like it, but they pay.